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Film Highlights Alcoa's Support in Murrow's Challenge to McCarthy

Posted on: Thursday, 24 November 2005, 00:00 CST

By Mark Roth, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Nov. 24--Already getting Oscar buzz, "Good Night, and Good Luck," the film about CBS newscaster Edward R. Murrow's showdown with Sen. Joseph McCarthy, features a fine cast of character actors.

But in many ways, one of the most important supporting actors in the movie isn't a human being, but a Pittsburgh company -- Alcoa.

Alcoa sponsored Mr. Murrow's weekly news program, "See It Now," and when Mr. Murrow decided to take on Sen. McCarthy's anti-communist campaign, there was much concern at CBS that Alcoa might come under extreme pressure to withdraw its support.

But Alcoa stuck by the program during its two critical McCarthy broadcasts in 1953 and 1954, both of which are portrayed in the film.

A year later, Alcoa did drop its sponsorship, at about the same time CBS shifted "See It Now" out of its prime-time weeknight slot and into a Sunday afternoon segment.

A major biography of Mr. Murrow, A.M. Sperber's "Murrow: His Life and Times," implies that Alcoa's decision could have been a delayed reaction to the controversy caused by the McCarthy broadcasts.

The book says Mr. Murrow later told a friend that Irving Wilson, then president of Alcoa, had apologized to him and said "the pressure from stockholders -- had been too great."

But others doubt the McCarthy shows had much to do with the aluminum company's decision.

In an oral interview housed at the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center, former Alcoa advertising chief Torrence M. Hunt recalled that he was the man who had to fly to New York and tell Mr. Murrow and his producer, Fred Friendly, that Alcoa was dropping "See It Now."

"I talked to them," Mr. Hunt recounted, "and said, 'We have been with you for a long time. You -- brought Alcoa's image up to a very elite [audience], but we are now starting on a more consumer-oriented marketing program, and your program, unfortunately, does not fit into this thing. We have got to reach 30 million people, and you reach only about 7 or 8 million a show, and I have got to reach at least 35 million.'

"That was one of the toughest jobs that we all had -- was to tell Edward R. Murrow, who is the dean of all news shows, that his product was great but it did not fit in with our promotions."

A major reason for changing advertising strategy may have been that the company was introducing Alcoa Wrap, its aluminum foil.

Another Murrow biographer, Joseph Persico, said that when Alcoa set out to advertise its new foil, it "decided it wanted to woo not an elite stratum of opinion makers but housewives."

Mr. Hunt's son, Torrence Hunt Jr., said he never asked his father about the Murrow decision, but, "I know that Alcoa Wrap was a big thing, and the company did a lot of consumer advertising for it. I mean, my father brought that stuff home by the tons."

Grant Heslov, who co-wrote the screenplay of "Good Night, and Good Luck" with George Clooney, said they didn't mean to imply in the film that Alcoa had dropped Mr. Murrow because of fallout from the McCarthy shows.

"My sense was that it was about how many people were watching the show," Mr. Heslov said, and by 1955, Mr. Murrow's viewership had dropped precipitously from nearly 40 million viewers to fewer than 10 million.

"I think if the show had been making CBS money and not costing them a lot and had been simpler to make, like a game show, this might not have happened," Mr. Heslov said.

George David Smith, an economics professor at New York University who wrote a history of Alcoa, said that among the older company executives he talked to, "I do know that this was a great source of pride, that they had stuck with Murrow through the McCarthy problem."

The decision not to budge was all the more important because Alcoa was the sole sponsor of the program and any quick pullout might have made it difficult to find another high-profile sponsor.

When Alcoa began sponsoring "See It Now" in 1951, Mr. Sperber wrote, it needed Mr. Murrow more than Mr. Murrow needed the company.

Alcoa had recently lost a major antitrust suit that determined it had created a monopoly in the American and Canadian aluminum industry.

After seeing themselves portrayed as monopolists, Mr. Smith said, Alcoa executives "just came to a policy decision -- that it would be a good idea to improve their image because they were regarded as a big bad corporation."

One of the things Alcoa President Irving Wilson did to burnish the firm's reputation was to build a brand new aluminum-clad company headquarters in Downtown Pittsburgh (now the Regional Enterprise Tower).

Another part of Mr. Wilson's strategy was to sponsor Mr. Murrow's program. "Alcoa was trying to speak to a broad audience of opinion makers, and opinion makers are the kind of people who watched that show," Mr. Smith said.

In the end, Mr. Smith said, Alcoa's support of "See It Now" spoke well of Mr. Wilson's personal integrity.

"The remarkable thing about this was that Wilson was a very conservative, anti-Communist executive, and I think even though Murrow's program by the standards of the times was a very liberal program, Alcoa stuck through all that."

One possible reason, Mr. Smith said, is that like many other conservative Republicans of the day, Mr. Wilson did not like Sen. McCarthy's tactics of innuendo and secret "evidence."

After Mr. Murrow's broadcasts, Sen. McCarthy threatened Mr. Murrow and anyone associated with him.

But, Mr. Smith said, Irving Wilson "was just not going to be pushed around."

"He was a staunchly conservative guy who probably didn't think that what McCarthy was doing was right," he said.

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VIA, AA, HNZ,

Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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